Cold fusion: smoke and mirrors, or raising a head of steam?

A lot has been happening in the world of cold fusion, or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) since our last update. Andrea Rossi, who claims to have a working commercial cold fusion reactor, finally released a report with seemingly independent scientific confirmation of the reaction in his device. This was quickly followed by news of a major investor dropping out because of a failed test. Meanwhile, more conventional scientists are pressing forward with LENR development, and some big-name companies are taking an interest.

The weekend of 7 and 8 September saw a conference in Zurich on Rossi's reactor, known as the E-Cat. The conference mainly preached to the converted, attended by licensees who market E-Cat technology in different regions, like E-Cat Australia and

Hydrofusion in the UK. Rossi has refused to give public demonstrations or prove the technology to sceptics; he wants to let the market decide. However, at the conference he produced a brief paper with details of third-party tests of an E-Cat.

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The device tested was a new high-temperature model known as a Hot Cat. Previous E-Cats have been confined to around 200C -- useful for heating water but extremely inefficient for conversion to electricity. Since May 2011 Rossi has been talking about an improved version, and the new Hot Cat operates at a high enough temperature for electricity generation.

Although other scientists in the report have no known affiliations, one section was authored by David Bianchini, a radiation measurement specialist of the University of Bologna. The test, which ran for over six hours, measured an average temperature of 1,100-1,200C, and concluded that the energy output of the four-kilo Hot Cat was three 3.6 Kilowatts from an input of 1.28 Kw.

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Rossi says that a full scientific report will be available soon.

However, on 9 September Hydrofusion Ltd put out a press release about a demonstration of the Hot Cat in Bologna stating "early indications are that the results of the 16 July/ 7 August reports could not be reproduced." Swedish science magazine

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NyTeknikreported that the test was overseen by Swedish National Testing and Research Institute who did not find the Hot Cat was outputting more energy than was input. As a result, a planned investment of 65 million Kronor (£6.1 million) was withdrawn. The investors are now considering whether this affects all E-Cats or just the new Hot Cat.

Rossi has responded by saying that Hot Cat validation will not be completed for another two or three months.

Sterling Allen of Pure Energy System News reported from the conference that a one-megawatt E-Cat will be delivered to a customer in Northern Italy within a couple of months, which will apparently be available for inspection by potential buyers and investors.

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The science discussed September's Zurich conference was evidently more persuasive. One time sceptic Enric Gunther now believes that Rossi has what he claims: "All his data he published fits with what other more scientific groups found."

"Their time has finally come"

Many of those other scientists were present at the 17th International Conference on Cold Fusion last month in South Korea, described by some attendees as having a "rock concert feel": after years in the wilderness, cold fusion researchers seem to think that their time has finally come.

Perhaps the most notable contribution was Francesco Celani's live demonstration of an apparently working cold fusion device.

Another paper presented at ICCF-17 was from a Japanese group with sponsorship from Toyota; this confirmed previous work indicating that transmutation was taking place during LENR reactions, showing that a nuclear reaction is taking place. Toyota funded cold fusion research in the 90s to the tune of £12 million, but was discouraged by negative results.

Meanwhile another company at ICCF-17, Brillouin Energy Corporation, has claimed positive results for its LENR device, the Brillouin Boiler. Like the E-Cat and Celani's demonstration, this uses nickel and hydrogen. A paper claimed that the Brillouin Boiler outputs produced more than twice as much heat as the energy input, running for hours at a time. The experimental results are small scale, producing nine watts of excess power, but the company is planning to scale up its apparatus. First there will be a commercial prototype, then range of boilers from 600 watts to over 500 kilowatts.

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Brillouin has entered into an agreement with SRI International, a major company which has been carrying out a low level of cold fusion research for many years. Perhaps Brillouin's biggest claim is that their results are consistently repeatable -- something of a Holy Grail in a field where results notoriously fail to get replicated. The company is already in the process of licensing its technology.

Competition

Defkalion, the Greek company often seen as Rossi's closest rival, also appeared at ICCF-17. The company recently decamped from Greece for economic reasons. "[Defkalion] said they are still working on setting up new labs in Canada and Switzerland and creating an industrial prototype," Frank Acland of E-Cat World told Wired.co.uk. "They project that commercial production lines will be set up in the coming year."

There is action elsewhere as well. Steven Krivit of New Energy Times achieved another coup with a leaked study from Boeing and Nasa, which considered the possibility of an LENR-powered aircraft among oyher future options. The report concludes that LENR lacks verification, but expresses this in terms of feasibility rather than assuming it's impossible.

However, Krivit told Wired.co.uk that the most significant event in the field in recent months was the death of Martin Fleischmann on 3 August, which he regards as the end of an era. Fleischmann was a British chemist and one half of the team that announced cold fusion in 1989. The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project has been set up in honour to promote the study and understanding of the new phenomenon.

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As for who is most likely to get the technology to market, Krivit suggests that there may be more going on beneath the surface. "Because the potential of this field is so incredibly and obviously disruptive, anybody who might be close to commercialising a potential LENR technology is going to keep it secret as long as they can," he said. "The last thing they want is to alert their competitors and invite industrial competition."

It's an indication of the way things are going that his New Energy Times, a key source of news on cold fusion, is launching a subscription service.

The field is looking less like the domain of tinkering eccentrics; increasingly it seems to be getting taken seriously as a business proposition. Technology is being licensed and companies are being set up. In the words of the Boeing/Nasa report: "LENR technology is potentially game-changing to not just aviation, but the worldwide energy mix as well. This technology should be followed to determine feasibility and potential performance."